


Purpose

by thesnarkysprocket



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Post-Stanford, Season/Series 02, Stanford Friends, Supernatural season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 07:27:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11686878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesnarkysprocket/pseuds/thesnarkysprocket
Summary: Sam and Dean are in Aspen, Colorado after what they thought was a spirit taking out hikers turned out to just be several people disregarding trail signs warning of sink holes. Sam talks Dean into taking a break from his quest to justify their dad's sacrifice and have a nice dinner. Imagine Sam's surprise when he runs into a couple of old friends.





	Purpose

**Author's Note:**

> I love a good 'Sam runs into friends from Stanford' fic, but there's not nearly enough of them. Then, it suddenly occurred to me earlier today that I could just write my own. I hope you enjoy the result :)
> 
> This takes place early in season 2.

“Dude, I don’t understand why you want to hang out here. The hunt was a bust—just a bunch of rich assholes ignoring trail signs and suffering the consequences of wandering around over an abandoned silver mine prone to collapsing, no ghost in sight. Plus, this place is so expensive. We’re going to burn through at least two cards just on the room and food!”

“Dean, we need a break. Since dad, you’ve been going non-stop.”

Dean tries to break in, but Sam just talks right over his protests, “Look, I get that you feel like you owe it to dad to continue the family work and save as many people as possible, I really do. But, you’re not going to be able to do that if you burn yourself out, you need some down-time to recharge, man. Anyway, who cares if we burn a couple of cards? It takes you, what? Half an hour to get a new one?”

“I’m fine, Sam. I don’t need ‘down-time,’ I need to get back on the road. You can’t possibly think we fit in here. Look around. These people are wearing hiking boots that cost more than we spend on gas in a month—and we buy a lot of gas. What am I even going to eat at this place? They probably have stuff like risotto on the menu. I don’t even know what that is!”

“Oh my god, Dean. They—Just—There’s pie. If you humor me for just one meal you can get a whole damn pie, and I won’t even complain when you eat the entire thing in one sitting. And, if you still want to leave after we eat, we’ll go—leave town and drive until we find a dump of a motel like we usually stay in. We have to eat regardless, so it’s not like we’ll be wasting time, and since when do you care about not fitting in?”

Dean continued to grumble, but followed Sam through the door of the restaurant—a restaurant, not a diner or a dive bar, a fancy goddamn restaurant with table clothes and a wine list. Where had he gone wrong raising Sam? He must have picked this up at Stanford. Dean shook his head, but continued to follow his brother. He could see right through Sam’s plan. He thought he could ply Dean with food and pie and then he’d go along with this insane idea Sam had. Why he was so gung-ho set on staying in this over-priced, stuck-up town, Dean did not know.

Once they were seated Dean cracked open the menu, expecting to see a lot of French—who eats snails, for godsake? But, he was pleasantly surprised to find that not only was the menu in English, he recognized pretty much everything listed.

“Okay, Sammy, maybe this isn’t the worst idea you’ve ever had. Let’s see what a $30 steak tastes like,” Dean said with a grin.

“It’s Sam,” Sam said, but he couldn’t help but grin himself. This was the first time he’d seen Dean really and truly smile since dad died.

Twenty minutes later, Dean was digging into his steak and potatoes enthusiastically and Sam was thoroughly enjoying his salmon and risotto (“That’s right, Dean, I’m ordering risotto”). They had even sprung for a bottle of wine, with only a bit of pushback from Dean.

As Dean was perusing the desert menu and Sam was considering ordering a second bottle for them, they were unexpectedly interrupted.

“Sam?! Is that you? Oh my god, I thought it was you! Sam Winchester! Ian! I told you it was Sam!” A young woman was rushing toward their table excitedly while pulling a man along behind her. Dean just stared in horror at the level of enthusiasm she was displaying. He turned to Sam.

“Um, do you know her?”

Sam just continued to sit with his mouth open and his glass of wine lifted halfway. After a moment he came back to himself enough to stutter out, “It, uh, it’s Amber. From Stanford. She was a friend of, of Jess’.”

By the time he managed to force out that explanation, Amber and Ian had made it over to their table. Amber was staring at Sam expectantly, clearly waiting for him to respond. Ian was not nearly as enthused as Amber, but also seemed pleased to see Sam.

“Um, hi, guys. Crazy seeing you here. How have you been?” Sam was clearly flustered. He hadn’t seen anyone from Stanford since that whole debacle with Becky and Zach and he had even pretty much stopped checking his Stanford email.

“How have we been? Man, we’ve been fine. How have you been? It’s been almost a year since we’ve seen you. Hell, no one has even heard from you in months,” Ian said incredulously.

Sam just looked down at the table, gathering his thoughts and organizing his story before responding. Before he could, though, Dean jumped in.

“We’re on a road trip. Sam needed some time to get away from everything, you know?”

Ian looked at Dean with an odd expression on his face, but it was Amber who spoke, “Oh my god! I saw you on the news! You’re the one who killed Zach’s fiancé! And almost killed Becky!” She was backing up and trying to drag Ian with her. The confusion cleared from his face to be replaced by horrified recognition.

Sam looked around and realized that the diners at the tables nearby had all gone quiet and were staring in their direction. Shit. This was not good.

“No, no! Wait guys! That was all a misunderstanding, I’m sure Becky told you, right? This is my brother, Dean. The guy who did all that looked kind of like him, and since Becky had only just met Dean, she mistook that guy for my brother at first. But he was killed and Dean was cleared,” Sam hastily explained. He didn’t think it would be a good idea to mention that Dean hadn’t so much been cleared as declared dead, but it’s all semantics, right?

They seemed hesitant to believe Sam, but he was Sam—he wouldn’t lie to them. They both knew Sam couldn’t even lie convincingly, after all. Who could forget the time he had tried to convince Jess he had been at the library studying all night when really Ian had drug him out to the bar. He hadn’t even gotten three words in before the guilt took over and he confessed everything. Or the time he had spaced on writing an important assignment and tried to convince their professor in halting, flustered sentences that he had lost the paper due to a series of increasingly unlikely events culminating in the paper being plucked out of mid-air by a passing pigeon. In short, even if Sam would lie, he just couldn’t. So, they relaxed and introduced themselves to Dean.

Ian and Amber, it turned out, were staying in Aspen for a long couple’s weekend. They had also just finished dinner, so they decided to join Sam and Dean for dessert with Dean’s encouragement. Now it was Sam’s turn to wonder what on earth had gotten into his brother.

They were engaging in the sort of small talk that’s expected when people unexpectedly meet up, “where are you staying?” “how long will you be in town?” that sort of thing, when Ian looked at Sam and said, “Man, I have to ask—when are you coming back to school? You were so close to graduation, and I bet they’d still let you do that law school interview. You’ve been on this road trip for a year.”

Sam had known this was coming. “I know. I was about to look into coming back, see what my options were, when our dad passed in May. It was pretty sudden, and hit us both hard. I needed to be around family, so Dean and I decided to take our inheritance and continue our road trip a bit longer. I can always go back to school next semester. Family, right?”

“Oh, Sam. I’m so sorry. That must have been terrible, and so soon after… I mean, for it to happen suddenly like that is always hard,” Amber said sympathetically. “At least you have your brother,” she smiled at Dean, who smiled right back. Sam kicked him under the table and shot Dean a look that he hoped was interpreted as ‘she’s taken and on a romantic getaway, keep it in your pants!’ Dean smirked at him, but backed off. 

After a while, Sam started to get back into swing of talking with his Stanford friends and was really enjoying it. There was a short lull in the conversation after dessert had been consumed and they were waiting for another bottle of wine to arrive when Dean stood up.

“Well, it was really cool to meet some of Sam’s friends, but I’ve had a long day, and I’m sure you’d all like to catch up without Sammy’s big brother hovering. Sam, I’m going to crash at the hotel, I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Uh, yeah. I’ll try not to wake you when I come back,” Sam said.

“Damn right you will. Anyway, you kids have fun,” and Dean left with a wave at them all.

Sam was momentarily worried Dean was going to go back to the hotel and brood some more about their dad, but as he watched Dean leave, he saw him stop to chat with the greeter and was pretty sure he saw a slip of paper that no doubt had a phone number on it get slipped into Dean’s pocket. He shook his head in amusement. Yeah, Dean would be okay for the night.

The wine arrived a moment later, and Ian poured them all a fresh glass. 

Amber took a delicate drink before looking at Sam and asking, “So, what exactly have you and Dean been doing on this road trip of yours?”

Sam took a gulp of wine to give himself a moment to decide how to answer that.

“Oh, you know—we stopped off in Vegas, saw the world’s largest ball of twine, hung out in every dive bar we pass. Normal stuff.”

“You’ve been wandering around America for a year visiting tourist traps? I mean, I get that you went through a trauma, Sam, but aren’t you bored? Don’t you want to do something with your life?” Ian asked.

“No,” Sam said truthfully. “No, Dean and I meet a lot of interesting people. It’s not boring. Plus, Dean’s not been himself since our dad died. It’s my turn to be there for him like he was there for me after Jess.”

Amber got a sad look in her eye. “Sam, I know you care about your brother, you’re a good guy, but you don’t have to give up your entire life for him. It’s been four months since your dad died. Maybe it’s time for Dean to take care of himself for a while so you can take your life off pause. I know he was there for you when you lost Jess, and trust me, I know how hard that was and how thankful you must be to him, but the two of you can support each other without driving aimlessly around the country.”

It took Sam a moment to adjust to the turn the conversation had taken. “Guys, really, I’m fine. Dean isn’t forcing me to stay with him or dragging me on this road trip. We’re doing this together.”

“But that’s our point, Sam,” Ian interjected. “We’re not suggesting Dean’s a bad guy or forcing you to do this. The two of you are close, I get it, but think about what you could be accomplishing with your life. It might be better for the both of you to have a purpose, something to work towards. What are you doing now? Driving from bar to bar? That’s not really helping either of you.”

“That’s not what this is about. We are do have a purpose. We…” Sam cut himself off. It’s not like he could explain to Amber and Ian that he and his brother do have a purpose—that they save people. Their conception of the world just doesn’t allow for an understanding of that sort of thing. For them, success is school, job, money. And that’s not their fault—hell, for a while there Sam had fallen into that way of thinking in his desperation to rebel against his dad.

Sam sighed. “Yeah. I’ll think about it, okay? Tell me what you guys have been up to, though. Have you talked to Luis lately? Catch me up.”

They kept talking for the next few hours—until the restaurant asked them to leave as they were trying to close. When they left, Sam parted ways with Amber and Ian with empty promises to stay in touch this time. He headed back to the hotel he and Dean had been staying at since they arrived in town. When he got there, Dean was asleep (and thankfully alone). Sam looked at him and smiled.

Sam had enjoyed catching up with his friends, but the more they talked the more he realized that he just didn’t belong in their world anymore. Hell, maybe he never had and he had just been oblivious to it while he was at Stanford because he had wanted so badly to be normal. But, he isn’t normal. And, you know what? He’s okay with that. He and Dean save people. He may not be a lawyer, and he probably never will be, but he’s doing just as much, probably more, good traveling the country with his brother. Saving people. Hunting things.


End file.
